Star Science Fiction 1 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

  “Who’s talking? That’s you, isn’t it Parke?” Edsel realized, suddenly, that the helmet allowed him to listen in on thoughts. He didn’t have time to consider what a weapon this would be for a ruler.

  Parke shot him neatly through the back with a gun he had been holding all the time.

  “What an idiot,” Parke told himself, slipping the helmet on his head. “A kingdom! All the power in the world, and he dreamed of a little kingdom!”. He glanced back at the cave.

  “With those troops—the force-field—and the weapons— I can take over the world.” He said it coldly, knowing it was a fact. He turned to go back to the cave, to activate the Synthetics, but stopped first to pick up the little black box Edsel had carried.

  Engraved on it, in flowing Martian script, was, “The Last Weapon.”

  I wonder what it could be, Parke asked himself. He had let Edsel live long enough to try out all the others; no use chancing a misfire himself. It was too bad he hadn’t lived long enough to try out this one, too.

  Of course, I really don’t need it, he told himself. He had plenty. But this might make the job a lot easier, a lot safer. Whatever it was, it was bound to be good.

  Well, he told himself, let’s see what the Martians considered their last weapon. He opened the box.

  A vapor drifted out, and Parke threw the box from him, thinking about poison gas.

  The vapor mounted, drifted haphazardly for a while, then began to coalesce. It spread, grew, and took shape.

  In a few seconds, it was complete, hovering over the box. It glimmered white in the dying light, and Parke saw that it was just a tremendous mouth, topped by a pair of unblinking eyes.

  “Ho ho,” the mouth said. “Protoplasm!” It drifted to the body of Edsel. Parke lifted a blaster and took careful aim.

  “Quiet protoplasm,” the thing said, nuzzling Edsel’s body. “I like quiet protoplasm.” It took down the body in a single gulp.

  Parke fired, blasting a ten-foot hole in the ground. The giant mouth drifted out of it, chuckling.

  “It’s been so long,” it said.

  Parke was clenching his nerves in a forged grip. He refused to let himself become panicked. Calmly he activated the force-field, forming a blue sphere around himself.

  Still chuckling, the thing drifted through the blue haze.

  Parke picked up the weapon Edsel had used on Faxon, feeling the well-balanced piece swing up in his hand. He backed to one side of the force-field as the thing approached, and turned on the beam.

  The thing kept coming.

  “Die, die!” Parke screamed, his nerves breaking.

  But the thing came on, grinning broadly.

  “I like quiet protoplasm,” the thing said as its gigantic mouth converged on Parke.

  “But I also like lively protoplasm.”

  It gulped once, then drifted out the other side of the field, looking anxiously around for the millions of units of protoplasm, as there had been in the old days.

  <>

  * * * *

  HENRY KUTTNER and C. L. MOORE

  This story pretends to be a collaboration between two persons; it would be at least as fair to call it a collaboration among eight or ten. Fans of Lewis Padgett (author of such fantasy books asA Gnome There Was and outstanding mysteries like The Brass Ring) and and of Lawrence O’Donnell (who wrote, among others, the splendid short novel Fury) will note traces of their favorites in this story, which is only fair for they—and half a dozen others—are pen-names of Kuttner and Moore. See if you can tell where one leaves off and the other begins in . . .

  A Wild Surmise

  “Do you feel that you are dreaming now, Mr. Hooten?” Dr. Scott asked gently.

  Timothy Hooten evaded the psychiatrist’s eyes. He fingered the smooth leather of the chair arms, found the sensation unsatisfactory, and turned his head to gaze out the window at the Empire State’s tower.

  “It’s like a dream, isn’t it?” he said evasively.

  “What is?”

  “That.” Hooten nodded at the needle-like mooring mast on the top of the tower. “Imagine mooring a dirigible to that thing. They never did, did they? It’s just the sort of thing that would happen in a dream. You know. Big plans, and then somehow everybody forgets about it and starts something new. Oh, I don’t know. Things get unreal.”

  Solipsism, Dr. Scott thought, but suspended judgment.

  “What things?” he murmured.

  “You, for example,” Hooten said. “You’ve got the wrong shape.”

  “Can you amplify that, Mr. Hooten?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I can,” Hooten said, looking with faint alarm at his own hands. “I’ve got the wrong shape too, you see.”

  “Do you know what the right shape is?”

  Hooten closed his eyes and thought hard. A look of astonishment passed fleetingly across his face. He scowled. Dr. Scott, studying him closely, made a note on a desk pad.

  “No,” Hooten said, opening his eyes very wide and assuming a negativistic attitude. “I haven’t the least idea.”

  “Don’t you want to tell me?”

  “I—ah—I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

  “Why did you come to see me, Mr. Hooten?”

  “My doctor said I should. So did my wife.”

  “Do you feel they were right?”

  “Personally,” Hooten said, with an air of quiet triumph, “I don’t feel that it makes the least difference what I do in a dream. Imagine walking on two legs!” He paused, startled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that,” he added.

  Dr. Scott smiled slightly.

  “Suppose you tell me a little more about the dream-”

  “About now, you mean? It’s just that everything’s wrong. Even talking. Wiggling the tongue this way.” Hooten fingered his jaw exploringly, and Dr. Scott made another note. “I’m dreaming, that’s all.”

  “Are you ever awake?”

  “Only when I’m asleep,” Hooten said. “How strange that sounds. I wonder what I mean.”

  “This is the dream world?” Dr. Scott asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Can you tell me what your problem is, Mr. Hooten?”

  “I haven’t any problems,” Hooten said, surprised. “If I had, they’d just be dream problems, wouldn’t they?”

  “Do you have problems when you’re—awake?”

  “I’m sure I must have,” the patient said. He looked thoughtful. “It seems to me I’ve got a psychiatrist in the real world, too. That’s where my conscious mind is. This, of course, is my unconscious.”

  “Can you tell me a little more about that?”

  Hooten closed his eyes again.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “When I’m asleep, you see, when I’m dreaming, the conscious mind is unconscious. That’s here and now. Well, in the real, waking world—the other world—I think my psychiatrist is trying to probe into my unconscious. What seems to you like my waking mind.”

  “Very interesting,” Dr. Scott said. “This other psychiatrist, now, could you describe him? What kind of a man is he?”

  “Man?” Hooten said, opening his eyes again. He hesitated. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly. I can’t remember what things are like in the real world. Different. That I know. Quite, quite different.” He spread out his hand and regarded it thoughtfully. He turned it over and looked at the lines of his palm. “My, my,” he murmured. “What won’t they think of next.”

  “Try to remember,” Dr. Scott urged.

  “I have tried. You dream-people keep telling me to try. But it’s no use. I must have a block in my mind,” he finished triumphantly.

  “We must try to find out what this block is, then. I’d like to try a little test, Mr. Hooten, if you don’t mind. I’m going to show you a picture, and I want you to tell me a story about it.”

  “Make up a story, you mean?”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Scott said, and handed Hooten a large card, on which were in
artistically depicted two ambiguous and semi-shapeless figures.

  “How strange,” Hooten said. “Their bones are inside them.”

  “Go on.”

  “They’re two psychiatrists,” Hooten murmured. “Anyone could see that. One’s awake and one’s asleep. One’s real and one isn’t. They’re both treating me. One is named Scott and the other—the other—”

  “Go on,” Scott said.

  “—is named—”

  “What is his name?”

  “Rasp,” Hooten said faintly. “Dr. Rasp. I have an appointment with him at two o’clock in the morning, when I’m awake.”

  * * * *

  “Do you feel that you are dreaming now?” Dr. Rasp telepathized gently.

  Timothy Hooten evaded the psychiatrist’s faceted gaze. He swung his oval body around to stare out the sky-slit at the distant polyhedron of the Quatt Wunkery. Then he waved his antennae gently and clicked his mandibles.

  “It’s like a dream, isn’t it?” he said evasively, though naturally not audibly. “Imagine building a Wunkery simply to pleat Quatts. Of course they never showed up. That sort of thing could happen only in a dream. Oh, you can’t convince me. This is a dream. Imagine walking around on all sixes.”

  Dr. Rasp scratched a memorandum on his left wing-case.

  “How do you think you should walk?” he asked.

  “I wonder,” Hooten said. “I do it all the time when I’m awake, but this is one of those recurrent dreams where I seem to get amnesia. I’ve tried and tried to remember what it’s like, but it’s no use. It’s like trying to pleat Quatts in a Wunkery. Oh, how idiotic.”

  “Just what is your problem, Mr. Hooten?”

  “Well, this absurd body I’m wearing, for one thing. My bones are in the wrong place.” Hooten’s faceted eyes glittered in a startled fashion. “Did I just say that? A minute ago, I mean? It reminds me of something.”

  “No,” Dr. Rasp said. “What does it remind you of?”

  Hooten irritably scratched his belly with a hind foot. There was a sharp, scraping sound.

  “I’ve forgotten,” he said.

  “I would like to try a little test,” Dr. Rasp said. “I’m going to project a thought, and I would like you to tell me what it makes you think of. Are you ready?”

  “I suppose so,” Hooten said.

  Dr. Rasp projected a curly nebular thought. Hooten studied it.

  “That’s my conscious mind,” he pointed out presently. “It might be an Angry Curler—the kind that live in the Antipodes, I mean—but what it reminds me of is my conscious mind, because of the psychiatrist swimming around in the middle of it.”

  “Psychiatrist?” Dr. Rasp inquired, surprised.

  “He’s treating my conscious mind—I think,” Hooten explained uncertainly. “He lives in the waking world with my conscious. You and I, Dr. Rasp, inhabit my unconscious, here and now. This other doctor—he’s treating both of us.”

  “This other doctor does not exist,” Dr. Rasp telepathized rather sourly. Then he caught himself and went on in a more professional tone, “Tell me about him, Mr. Hooten. What does this psychiatrist look like?”

  “Tartuffe,” said Hooten, to the surprise of Dr. Rasp, who had never heard the name. “No, Tartan. No, Scott. That’s it. A psychiatrist named Dr. Scott who lives in my conscious mind. I have an appointment with him at two p.m. tomorrow, when I’m awake.”

  * * * *

  Timothy Hooten looked out the window at the Empire State Building. He was taking a word association test.

  “Home,” Dr. Scott said.

  “Estivate,” Hooten replied.

  “Sex.”

  “Eggs.”

  “Mother”

  “Larva.”

  “Psychiatrist.”

  “Bugs,” Hooten said.

  Dr. Scott paused. “Larva,” he said.

  “Clouds of glory,” Hooten said briskly. “Trailing.”

  “Bugs,” Dr. Scott said.

  “Awake.”

  “Glory.”

  “Nuptial flight,” Hooten said rather dreamily.

  Dr. Scott made a note.

  “Bugs,” he said.

  “Appointment. Two a.m. Dr. Rasp.”

  * * * *

  “This word man,” Dr. Rasp said. “It keeps cropping up in your mind. Exactly what does it mean?”

  “I haven’t the least idea,” Hooten told him, looking through the sky-slit at the Quatt Wunkery.

  “What does it make you think of?”

  “Being awake,” Hooten said.

  Dr. Rasp rubbed his right mandible.

  “I’d like to try a little experiment,” he said. “You’ve been coming here for nearly twelve glitters, and we still haven’t got past that block in your mind. You’re resisting me, you know.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m dreaming, can I?” Hooten demanded.

  “That’s the exact point. Are you trying to evade responsibility?”

  “Certainly not,” Hooten said with dignity. “Not when I’m awake. But I’m not awake now. You’re not real. I’m not real—at least, this ridiculous body of mine isn’t. And as for the Quatt Wunkery—!”

  “The experiment I’d like to try,” Dr. Rasp said, “is a matter of quasi-estivation. Do you know what this is?”

  “Certainly,” Hooten said glibly. “Hypnosis.”

  “I don’t think I know the word,” Dr. Rasp said. “What does it mean?”

  “Quasi-estivation. My conscious mind blanks out and my unconscious mind cuts in.”

  Dr. Rasp suppressed whatever reaction he might have had to this lucid explanation. “Very well,” he said, extending his antennae. “Shall we try it? Just relax. Let your wing-cases hang. Open your mandibles just a little. That’s right.” He crossed antennae with Hooten and looked fixedly into the patient’s faceted eyes with his own. “Now you are estivating. You are in a burrow. It is warm and delightfully musty. You are curled up and estivating. Are you estivating?”

  “Yes,” Hooten telepathized dully.

  “There is a block in your mind. Something in your mind is fighting me. Something keeps insisting that you are dreaming. In a short time I shall order you to wake up. Will you obey me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be awake then?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a dream,” the estivated Hooten said languidly.

  “Who says so?”

  “Dr. Scott.”

  “There is no Dr. Scott,” Dr. Rasp said with great firmness. “Dr. Scott is imaginary. You unconscious mind has created Dr. Scott, to protect itself. You do not want to find out what is really troubling you, and so you have created another psychiatrist to fight me. But he does not really exist. There are no such creatures as men. Their world is imaginary. Dr. Scott is just a censor in your mind. He is not real. Do you understand that?”

  Hooten’s antennae twiddled.

  “Y-yes,” he said reluctantly.

  “Is Dr. Scott real?”

  “Certainly,” Hooten said. “I’ve got an appointment with him at two p.m. He’s going to give me narcosynthesis.” He added kindly, “That is a form of estivation.”

  There was a pause.

  Then Dr. Rasp said, “You will return to this office at two P.m. You will not keep your appointment with Dr. Scott. You will undergo quasi-estivation again. Do you understand?”

  “But I... yes.”

  “When I count to minus one you will wake up. Minus ten, minus nine.. .

  At minus one Hooten woke up. He looked uneasily at Dr. Rasp.

  “What happened?” he inquired.

  “We are making progress,” the psychiatrist said. “I think it wise that we continue the treatment as soon as possible. Suppose you meet me here at twop.m.

  “Two p.m.?” Hooten said. “What an unearthly hour.”

  “I have a reason,” Dr. Rasp said.

  * * * *

  “I’m sorry to be late,” Ho
oten said, coming into Dr. Scott’s office. “I guess I was daydreaming or something.”